Issue 1 (63) 2025

2025

Publication date: 09.04.2025

Description

The publication of this volume was financed by the Jagiellonian University in Kraków – Faculty of Polish Studies.

Cover design: Maciej Godawa

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Editorial team

Editor-in-Chief Monika Świerkosz

Executive Editor Tomasz Kunz

Issue Editors Małgorzata Okupnik, dr hab. Barbara Kaszowska-Wandor

Issue content

O leczeniu ciała i duszy. W stulecie wydania Czarodziejskiej góry Thomasa Manna

Małgorzata Okupnik

Wielogłos, Issue 1 (63) 2025, 2025, pp. 1-5

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.001.21420

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Articles

Diagnostyka i terapia gruźlicy na przykładzie Czarodziejskiej góry Thomasa Manna

Konrad Łyjak

Wielogłos, Issue 1 (63) 2025, 2025, pp. 7-24

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.002.21421

Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain is a multidimensional novel that invites interpretation from various perspectives. It offers commentary on Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, references Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, and reflects on the moral and intellectual state of European societies just before the First World War. The novel also explores art, politics, history, and theology. Above all, however, it is a story about tuberculosis, a chronic infectious disease that still causes significant global mortality. This article analyzes Mann’s novel in terms of the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis, drawing from both the historical context (the period in which the novel is set, 1907–1914) and current knowledge of disease prevention and control. The analysis is informed not only by literary sources but also by medical publications, which are essential for this context. The text examines the symptoms experienced by patients at the International Sanatorium ‘Berghof’ in Davos, Switzerland, as well as the diagnostic methods employed by the medical staff, which were largely limited to palpation, auscultation, X-rays, and self-monitoring of temperature by patients. The article also covers the forms of therapy available, which primarily involved symptomatic treatment without addressing the root cause of the illness. Among the treatments described in The Magic Mountain are conservative approaches such as climatotherapy, bed rest, and oxygen therapy, as well as invasive treatments like artificial pneumothorax, which is presented in a grotesque manner in the novel. The key takeaway from reading the work of the German Nobel laureate is that it offers a highly accurate portrayal of illness – not only metaphorically but, more importantly, literally.

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Mroczny Eros albo Thomasa Manna witalizm tanatyczny

Agnieszka Sobolewska-Alsberg

Wielogłos, Issue 1 (63) 2025, 2025, pp. 25-46

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.003.21422

This article interprets Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain as a discourse on thanatic vitalism. By examining the desires depicted in the novel, the author illustrates how Mann used the emotional pathology of the sanatorium to encapsulate the decline of liberal romanticism and its core ideals. The paper highlights the dialogues Mann engaged in concerning the romantic notion of love, alongside the evolving discourses in psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, and philosophy during the fin-de- -siècle period. These discussions enabled Mann to develop a concept of Eros that aligns with key currents in the history of psychoanalysis. The article also explores the distinct psychoanalytic conceptions of love that emerged in the early 20th century, underscoring their close connection to Mann’s attempt to diagnose German-speaking culture at the onset of the Great War.

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Bildungsroman w obliczu katastrofy. O modernistycznym wariancie powieści rozwojowej

Tomasz Kotłowski

Wielogłos, Issue 1 (63) 2025, 2025, pp. 47-76

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.004.21423

This essay compares two novels from the interwar period: The Magic Mountain (1924) by Thomas Mann and Farewell to Autumn (1927) by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. The author treats these works as both period documents and parodies of the Bildungsroman, given the incompatibility of the traditional Enlightenment genre with times of crisis. The failure of the educational process in both novels gives rise to decadence, although both works critique the life model they depict, with the narrators’ irony serving as a key vehicle for this critique. Both writers challenge Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy, accusing him of being overly optimistic about the problem of decadence–a phenomenon that, in the author’s view, can be linked to the concept of “behavioral sink” developed by John B. Calhoun.

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Nierzeczywisty świat białych szczytów. Kraina śniegu i Czarodziejska góra w kontekście malarskiej poetyki, heterotopii, czasu i przestrzeni

Wiktoria Pierzak

Wielogłos, Issue 1 (63) 2025, 2025, pp. 77-98

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.005.21424

This article explores the similarities between Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country and Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. The analysis focuses on the presented world and its space-time properties, the poetics of description, and how these elements transform in the perceptions of the main characters, Shimamura and Hans Castorp. The article also compares the demeanors of both characters, their attitudes toward their places of residence, their relationships with the women they encounter, their lifestyles, and their perspectives on the social world and human activity within it. The author examines how the dynamic between the male observer and the observed woman contributes to the narrative of both works and relates to themes of beauty, love, life, and death. The text applies Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope and Foucault’s notion of heterotopia.

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Sanatoryjny recycling – przestrzeń i płeć w Empuzjonie Olgi Tokarczuk

Wiktoria Kulak

Wielogłos, Issue 1 (63) 2025, 2025, pp. 99-124

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.006.21425

The article analyzes Empuzjon (2022), Olga Tokarczuk’s first post-Nobel novel in the context of sanatorium literature. The author draws attention to the space created in the work in its experiential, performative, affective and cultural dimensions, as well as to the narrative and genre strategies used by Tokarczuk. The subject of reflection is also the image of patriarchal culture (re)created in Empuzjon, which is a critical diagnosis of modernity.

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Rodzinne historie choroby. (Auto)patografie jako zapisy (między)pokoleniowych traum

Maria Świątkowska

Wielogłos, Issue 1 (63) 2025, 2025, pp. 125-145

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.007.21426

This article attempts to present and analyze examples of a phenomenon of embedding individual experiences of illness in the context of their social determinants in contemporary (auto)pathographies. The three case studies which are the main focus of this texts are examples of broadly understood (auto)patographic literature published in Poland recent years: Jak nie zabiłem swojego ojca i jak bardzo tego żałuję by Mateusz Pakuła (2021), Mireczek by Aleksandra Zbroja (2021), and Jak płakać w miejscach publicznych by Emilia Dłużewska (2023). The analysis will foreground the ways of representing unprocessed, collective historical trauma, which, as Michał Bilewicz (Traumaland) pointed out, is inherent to the functioning of contemporary Polish society. Focusing on this aspect will point to a phenomenon that Lisa Diedrich described as the manifestation of “national arts of being ill” in (auto)pathographic narratives (Treatments . Language, Politics and the Culture of Illness). It also allows to appreciate the emancipatory and community-building potential of the presented texts, the importance of which in critical analyses of malady literature was emphasized by Klaudia Muca (Tekst jako terapia).

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Reviews and discussion

Przybyszewski odczarowany i zaczarowany na nowo. Na marginesie edycji krytycznej Dzieł literackich Stanisława Przybyszewskiego

Fryderyk Nguyen

Wielogłos, Issue 1 (63) 2025, 2025, pp. 147-162

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.25.008.21427

Stanisław Przybyszewski is a writer whose work, though appreciated internationally– particularly in German-speaking countries–has not always been well-received in Poland. The new eleven-volume critical edition, edited by Gabriela Matuszek-Stec, offers an opportunity to rediscover this artist and free his legacy from harmful stereotypes. The edition includes a detailed critical apparatus that explains the biographical and literary context, while the introductions to the volumes offer original interpretations of the artist’s works. While the research on Przybyszewski’s legacy is broad, recurring themes include gender issues, attitudes toward spirituality, and psychoanalysis. The series is primarily aimed at literary scholars and researchers.

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Files to download

Title and imprint pages PDF Table of contents PDF About the Authors (pl) PDF

Słowa kluczowe: The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann, tuberculosis, diagnosis, therapy, thanatic vitalism, dark psychoanalysis, Dionysos, destruction, Great War, Bildungsroman, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Thomas Mann, decadence, Zeitroman, Friedrich Nietzsche, parody, modernism, Snow Country, Magic Mountain, sense of sight, colours, space, idleness, heterotopia, sanatorium literature, space turn, identity, performativity, heterotopy, illness narratives, pathographies, life writing, trauma, historical trauma, postmemory, health humanities, medical humanities, Mateusz Pakuła, Emilia Dłużewska, Aleksandra Zbroja, Stanislaw Przybyszewski, critical edition, Young Poland, psychoanalysis, feminist literary criticism

Funding information

The publication of this volume was financed by the Jagiellonian University in Kraków – Faculty of Polish Studies.